Mibrar Reza and Adam Tracy — following the spirit of Verne, von Braun, NASA and Musk — were the first-place winners of this semester's inaugural NJIT Makerspace Soda Bottle Rocket Competition, charting unexplored regions of Lubetkin Field at Mal Simon Stadium with water-powered flights of 227 and 250 feet, respectively. The contest was a fun and easy way for 24 student teams to learn about the Makerspace, which fully opened its second phase this semester and has machines and gadgets to amaze and educate any tech-minded visitor. Reza represented the upper classes and won a $200 gift card for…

Andressa Marangon, a senior electrical and computer engineering major at New Jersey Institute of Technology, won a $1,000 scholarship from the IEEE Electron Devices Society for her role in improving the brightness and power consumption of blue LEDs that technologically lag behind their red and green cousins. That might not affect your iPhone or TV anytime soon, she said, but it's important for applications such as healthcare products and industrial machinery. Red, green and blue lights are required to make all other colors, but blue LEDs tend to leak electrons because they have a relatively…

New Jersey Institute of Technology is among the Best Global Universities identified by U.S. News and World Report in its eighth edition of the annual ranking. Only 271 U.S. universities made the 2022 list, which spans 91 countries in six continents. Globally, NJIT ranked in the top half of some 1,750 colleges. Just seven New Jersey schools earned the recognition, which stems from research output and reputation. “NJIT is a leading polytechnic university that is both a research powerhouse and has excelled in the preparation of its students for careers in what is unquestionably a STEM-…

Sanchoy Das recalls his first jaw-dropping view of an Amazon fulfillment warehouse in 2013. The word “explosive” came to mind. Gone were the single-product sections where boxes of diapers and paper towels were stacked next to each other in neat rows. Instead, these products were dispersed throughout the building in hundreds of different locations, tucked into bins with unrelated items such as ketchup and motor oil. But what looked like chaos, he learned, was in fact a sophisticated model optimized for speed. By offering free, expedited shipping, Amazon’s orders mushroomed. The e-tailer…

With students back in classrooms this fall, educators and superintendents across New Jersey were once again welcomed back to NJIT’s campus to network and discuss fresh ways they can enrich hands-on STEM learning in their schools at the university’s fifth annual STEM School Leadership Forum — “Bringing Cutting-Edge STEM into Your Classrooms.” The Oct. 19 event, sponsored by NJIT’s Center for Pre-College Programs (CPCP), was kicked off inside the Campus Center Atrium with early greetings to on-hand and virtual attendees from CPCP Director Jacqueline Cusack and NJIT Provost Fadi Deek. The…

NJIT Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Joerg Kliewer is looking to help preserve privacy by busting conventional wisdom about the future of computer security, which states that today's data protection measures, especially in Internet-of-things devices, stand absolutely no chance against the hacking power that will soon be wielded by the new era of quantum computers. Quantum computers remain years away from being in the mainstream, with their promise that data can be represented by predicting the state of electrons, rather than computing by the traditional approach of flipping…

Nirwan Ansari, an electrical and computer engineer who is a pioneer in the field of communications networks, and Gabrielle Esperdy, an architectural historian and trailblazer in the digital humanities, are the winners of the Board of Overseers Excellence in Research award for 2021. Atam Dhawan, senior vice provost for research, called the two awardees “exceptionally consequential researchers.” “Both Nirwan Ansari and Gabrielle Esperdy have made fundamental contributions – they’re both gamechangers in their distinctive ways – in very different arenas,” Dhawan said. “What links them is the…

Members of NJIT's new Center for Artificial Intelligence Research will look to expand knowledge of the theory, data and applications of their field, which director Grace Wang said is quickly evolving from experimental to practical status. The center will rely heavily on external grants, such as from the National Science Foundation which devoted $868 million to artificial intelligence research this year. Degree offerings will include an M.S. in artificial intelligence, most likely starting in fall 2022, building on existing courses such as CS-677, Deep Learning, which has been offered since…

New Jersey Institute of Technology yesterday officially recommissioned the university's tutoring laboratory as the Norma J. Clayton '81 Learning Center, in honor of the alumna and benefactor of the university, who earned a B.S. in industrial administration here, spurring an accomplished leadership career at companies like Boeing and RCA. Clayton, who retired in 2017 and is now co-vice chair of the NJIT Board of Trustees as well as chairwoman of the Board of Trustees at Tuskegee University, said she was hesitant to seek academic help as a new student but later came to crave it. Coming into…

Nearly half of adolescents and young adults with lingering symptoms of concussion suffer from an eye coordination disorder that causes blurred and double vision, headaches and difficulties concentrating. There is no proven method for treating the condition when it occurs after a head injury. “The disorder makes it hard to read books, work on a computer or even use a smartphone, and the impact on cognition and learning can be severe. It also delays the return to sports, work and driving for young people,” said Tara Alvarez, a professor of biomedical engineering at NJIT and an expert on…